Presidential

John F. Kennedy is born

John F. Kennedy is born

Author

Website Name

History.com

Year Published

2009

Title

John F. Kennedy is born

URL

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/john-f-kennedy-is-born

Access Date

December 09, 2016

Publisher

A+E Networks

One of America’s best-loved presidents, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is born into a politically and socially prominent family in Brookline, Massachusetts, on this day in 1917. He was the first American president to be born in the 20th century.

In 1935, Kennedy enrolled at Harvard University and received a degree in international affairs with honors in 1940. While there, he suffered a debilitating back injury that would have life-long repercussions. After college, Kennedy served on a Navy PT boat in World War II. In 1952, he won a seat in the House of Representatives and then served in the Senate for seven years beginning in 1953. Also in 1953, he married the lovely Jacqueline Bouvier. In subsequent years, Kennedy underwent several dangerous spinal operations; it was during his recuperation from one such operation that he wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning history Profiles in Courage. Unfortunately, the operations never succeeded in curing his persistent back pain and, for the rest of his life, Kennedy took a powerful combination of pain killers, muscle relaxants and sleeping pills, a fact he successfully hid from the public. The pain, however, did not prevent him from becoming a rising Democratic star in the Senate; he ran for the presidency in 1960.

Kennedy’s support for liberal economic and social policies, such as civil rights and increased funding for education and public housing, in addition to his strong anti-communist stance, appealed to a broad cross-section of Americans during the presidential campaign. In addition to his political philosophy, Kennedy capitalized on his handsome features and charismatic personality to beat Republican candidate Richard Nixon to become the nation’s 35th president. In a televised debate, the well-groomed and relaxed Kennedy had appeared more presidential than a haggard-looking, unshaven, visibly nervous Nixon. Many observers believed this debate was critical to his success.

President Kennedy was the youngest man ever elected to the office. His youth, intelligence and worldliness—along with his beautiful, stylish and much-admired wife–charmed Americans and Europeans alike. His children, Caroline and John Jr., were often photographed cavorting around the White House grounds with their pets or playing under their father’s desk in the Oval Office. Kennedy’s brother, Bobby, also young and enthusiastic, served as his attorney general and closest advisor. The American public increasingly saw the Kennedy family as a kind of American royalty and the press portrayed Kennedy’s administration as a sort of modern-day Camelot, with the president himself as King Arthur presiding over an ideal society.

As president, Kennedy combined a fervent stance against communism with a liberal domestic agenda. He was a strong proponent of civil rights as well as a Cold War hawk. He authorized covert operations to remove Fidel Castro from power and, in 1962, challenged the Soviet Union to remove nuclear missiles installed on Cuba. The resulting Cuban Missile Crisis was a frighteningly tense showdown between JFK and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that brought the two nuclear superpowers to the brink of war. JFK also sought peaceful means of fighting communism—he established the Peace Corps and funded scientific research programs to fight poverty and illness and provide aid to developing nations. By encouraging American youth to donate their time and energy to international aid, JFK hoped to provide positive democratic role models to developing nations. In a 1961 speech, Kennedy advocated for a vigorous U.S. space program and vowed to send an American to the moon by the close of the 1960s.

In 1963, Kennedy was assassinated while driving through Dallas, Texas, in a convertible. Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy in the head from the second story of a book depository. Texas Governor John Connally and Jackie Kennedy were also in the car. Connally was hit in the back, chest, wrist and thigh, but eventually made a full recovery. Jackie was uninjured.

A bystander named Abraham Zapruder happened to capture the shooting on his 8mm home-movie camera. Zapruder’s film provided graphic visuals of JFK’s death and has been endlessly analyzed for evidence of a potential conspiracy. In 1964, the federally appointed Warren Commission investigated the assassination and concluded that Oswald acted alone. Some scholars, investigators and amateur sleuths, however, still insist Kennedy’s death was a coup d’etat committed by hard-line U.S. anti-communists who feared Kennedy would pull out the U.S. advisors he had sent to Vietnam in 1962 and act soft on the communist threat from the USSR. Another conspiracy theory involves a concerted effort by organized crime, the Pentagon, and the CIA to murder the president; this view was adapted by Oliver Stone into the 1991 film JFK.

Kennedy is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, where an eternal flame burns in his memory.

Also on this day

At 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa of Nepal, become the first explorers to reach the summit of Mount Everest, which at 29,035 feet above sea level is the highest point on earth. The two, part of a British expedition,...

On this day in 1780, the treatment of Patriot prisoners by British Colonel Banastre Tarleton and his Loyalist troops leads to the coining of a phrase that comes to define British brutality for the rest of the War for Independence: “Tarleton’s Quarter.”
After the surrender of Charleston on May 12,...

On this day in 2005, 23-year-old Danica Patrick becomes the first female driver to take the lead in the storied Indianapolis 500.
Having previously distinguished herself in the Toyota Atlantic series, Patrick had qualified fourth–another best for a woman–for the 89th Indianapolis 500, only her fifth Indy Racing League event....

Union troops lose another foot race with the Confederates in a minor stop on the long and terrible campaign between Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Potomac and Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. During the entire month of May 1864, Grant and Lee had pounded each other in...

President Ronald Reagan travels to Moscow to begin the fourth summit meeting held in the past three years with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Though the summit produced no major announcements or breakthroughs, it served to illuminate both the successes and the failures achieved by the two men in terms of...

Judge John Wood, known as “Maximum John,” is assassinated outside his San Antonio, Texas, home as he bent down to look at a flat tire on his car. Actor Woody Harrelson’s father, Charles Harrelson, was charged with the murder after evidence revealed that drug kingpin Jimmy Chagra, whose case was...

Heavy fog causes a collision of boats on the St. Lawrence River in Canada that kills 1,073 people on this day in 1914. Caused by a horrible series of blunders, this was one of the worst maritime disasters in history.
The Empress of Ireland left Quebec on May 28 with 1,057...

Following approval of statehood by the territory’s citizens, Wisconsin enters the Union as the 30th state.In 1634, French explorer Jean Nicolet landed at Green Bay, becoming the first European to visit the lake-heavy northern region that would later become Wisconsin. In 1763, at the conclusion of the French and Indian...

In one of the worst ship disasters in history, the British liner Empress of Ireland, carrying 1,477 passengers and crew, collides with the Norwegian freighter Storstad in the gulf of Canada’s St. Lawrence River. The Storstad penetrated 15 feet into the Empress of Ireland‘s starboard side, and the vessel sunk...

At the height of the Great Depression, the so-called “Bonus Expeditionary Force,” a group of 1,000 World War I veterans seeking cash payments for their veterans’ bonus certificates, arrive in Washington, D.C. One month later, other veteran groups spontaneously made their way to the nation’s capital, swelling the Bonus Marchers...

Some 35 U.S. states declare it to be Bob Hope Day on this day in 2003, when the iconic comedic actor and entertainer turns 100 years old.
In a public ceremony held in Hollywood, city officials renamed the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Avenue–famous for its historic buildings and as...

Some of those in attendance to see the Ballets Russes at the Théâtre des Champs-élysées on May 29, 1913, would already have been familiar with the young Russian composer Igor Stravinsky through his 1910 ballet L’Oiseau de feu (The Firebird). But if they expected his newest work to proceed in...

John C. Fremont again departs from St. Louis to explore the West, having only recently returned from his first western expedition.
The son of a French father and American mother, Fremont had an unstable and nomadic childhood, and money troubles often plagued his family. As a young man, he showed...

On May 29, 1922, the United States Supreme Court rules that organized baseball did not violate antitrust laws as alleged by the Baltimore franchise of the defunct Federal League in 1915. The Supreme Court held that organized baseball is not a business, but a sport.
In January 1915, the Baltimore Terrapins...

In a joint communique issued by the United States and the Soviet Union following the conclusion of summit talks with General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev during President Richard Nixon’s visit to Moscow (the first visit ever by an U.S. president), both countries set forth their standard positions on Vietnam. The United...

On the night of Thursday, May 29, 1913, the pioneering Russian ballet corps Ballet Russes performs Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), choreographed by the famous dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, at the Theatre de Champs-Elysees in Paris.
In founding the Ballet Russes in 1909, the flamboyant impresario...

On this day in 1942, on the advice of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler orders all Jews in occupied Paris to wear an identifying yellow star on the left side of their coats.
Joseph Goebbels had made the persecution, and ultimately the extermination, of Jews a personal priority from...